I'm an athlete?

I'm pretty confident that I spent my entire childhood NOT running because I was afraid of what people might think.  

For those of you who spent hot, buggy Texas evenings watching me shuffle down the soccer field or grudgingly round the bases at softball, you can agree that I'm not exactly light-footed and graceful.  Seeing kids effortlessly fly past me only reinforced to my young self that ATHLETICISM?  I DIDN'T HAVE IT.  This is why I was on the dance team for four years of high school-- no running is required when sporting tasseled white boots, a petticoat and rhinestone cowboy hats.

I have never considered myself an athlete.  Athletes are graceful and move easily and are agile, and they are motivated to win!  They go all out every. time. and experience the thrill of a victory and the agony of defeat!  Um... yea, no.  I'm extremely competitive, yes.  I like to win and I like to be right, oh yes.  But I've just never had the drive to be the best on the playing field... or the track... or the tennis courts (7th grade PE credit, whoop whoop!).

When I started running a little over 4 years ago, Brian would go to the track with me to run and somehow evolved into my semi-coach.  After taking a walk break after an exhausting 1/4 mile of running (that would be ONE lap around the track, good gracious...), I would stop to walk, then kinda run, then walk again, then if I saw more people coming to the track, you could pretty much just consider me down for the count because there was NO WAY I was going to do the shuffle in front of spectators.  My lackadaisical routine must have a struck a nerve because he started telling me out of the blue to run a mile, just one mile, and then let myself walk.  And then as he walked away he told me that a jog isn't considered a jog unless both feet are always in motion, and that if I stopped to walk that that distance didn't count towards whatever distance I was aiming to complete.  As you can imagine, this went over extraordinarily well.  

So off I went, slowly making my way through four laps, making a concerted effort to have both feet in motion at all times.  If you close your eyes and think of that, you can probably picture me as a baby elephant trying to wobble forward.  I had no form, no posture, no idea how to breathe and not hyperventilate... it was a mess.  BUT I was moving.

Even now, just because I'm training to run a marathon and have learned how to do all of those things like breathe and pace myself and change how my feet strike if something feels funny and eat Gu Chomps mid-run and make sure my fists never clench and I run as if holding eggs in the palms of my hands... I still didn't feel like that qualified me as an "athlete."  And then I took to The Google:

athlete: a person who is trained or skilled in exercises, sports, or games requiring physical strength, agility, or stamina

Hm.  Are you wondering what the point of this blog is?  I was too, until just a moment ago-- completely lost track of where I was going.  Basically, I came across this picture today while perusing past NYC marathon stuff:

And I realized... I'm going to be running in front of thousands upon thousands of people lining the streets to cheer the marathoners on.  And I am one of the marathoners!  Mind. Blown.  On the days when I'm struggling with a run and even getting through three miles feels like torture because I JUST DON'T WANT TO, I try to remind myself of how far I've come:  from a clunky teenager who would stop jogging to walk when a car drove by, to a wannabe runner who couldn't make it two consecutive laps around a track, to an ATHLETE in her mid-20s who is training her bum off to run a marathon.  That is what I think they call "progress," my friends.